Growing Marijuana: Drying & Curing for Perfect Buds

After all the work you’ve done to grow and harvest your marijuana plants, you have two more important steps before your buds are ready to smoke or process: drying and curing.

You can do everything right during the growing season and harvest at just the right time for peak THC, taste, and aroma, but if your drying and curing are wrong, you lose marijuana potency and value.

In about 50% of the cannabis grow ops I’ve seen, growers aren’t using the best drying and curing methods.

They’re losing the full THC, taste, aroma and longevity that their buds could have had.

Before we talk about drying and curing, consider the selective harvesting method, in which you harvest individual buds as they become ripe.

This gives less-mature buds (usually they’re the buds buried lower in the canopy) the chance to more fully ripen.

You get heavier, more potent harvests when you harvest selectively rather than harvesting the entire plant all at once.

Remember also that drying is not the same as curing.

One of the mistakes I used to make was to just dry my buds and package them, without curing.

The beneficial thing about cutting and drying individual stalks or buds (as you see in the picture accompanying this article), instead of cutting and hang-drying the entire plant all at once, is you separate your buds from larger stems and stalks that contain lots of moisture.

When I use the harvesting method of cutting an entire plant at the bottom and hanging it to dry, I notice that the buds at the ends of the stems dry first, but the buds at the bottom of the stems near the main stalk take longer.

If you cut individual stalks or buds, you remove moisture-filled stalks and stems, and shorten your drying time.

Temperature, Humidity & Other Conditions for Drying Marijuana

Buds won’t dry properly or be clean and tasty unless they have the right environment.

The ideal marijuana drying environment has the following characteristics:

Temperature controlled between 73-77F

Relative humidity controlled to 48-56%

Absolutely no pet hairs, insects, mold/fungi, dirt, dust, cigarette smoke or other pollutants in the drying room, or coming in from air conditioning ducts or open windows.

Exhaust venting and air exchange to remove and renew the entire volume of drying-room air at least once every hour.

No sunlight or other direct intense light.

Gentle air movement that does not sway hanging buds.

Total security control.

The closer you get to ideal drying environment characteristics, the better, if you want to protect your buds from molds, mildews, overdrying, THC deterioration, etc.

For example, high humidity or heat, and/or the presence of molds and mildews, will seriously damage if not ruin your harvested marijuana.

And of course, don’t dry buds in an oven or microwave.

In the ideal cannabis drying-room environment, your buds take anywhere from 4-10 days to dry properly, depending on how much water content they start with, and the size, density and shape of your buds.

When the bud itself is dry but not crispy, and its stalk bends but does not easily or quickly break when you’re bending it, that’s when it’s properly dried and ready for curing.

Many growers overdry their buds, which harms the crucial second step (curing), because buds need to retain an adequate level of moisture to make curing successful.

So remember, if you slightly under-dry your buds, you can at least fix that by drying them more.

If you over-dry your buds, it’s hard if not impossible to effectively re-hydrate them.

But be aware that if you put buds in containers before the buds are properly dried, mold and other problems can develop.

Curing Marijuana For Kind Taste & Aroma

Curing marijuana is a longer and more complex process than drying it, but curing is essential if you want to lock in optimum potency, taste, and aroma.

Curing creates a smoother, more pleasing smoke.

If you overdry during the drying phase, you don’t have nearly as much latitude for proper curing.

People cure in shopping bags, shoe boxes, plastic containers, and many other methods.

For the sake of cleanliness (I don’t trust plastic containers because they can release poison into your buds), I cure my marijuana in Kerr wide-mouth, 32-ounce jars in a temperature-controlled room that’s as ultra-clean, climate-controlled, vented and secure as the drying room.

For curing, it’s the relative humidity (RH) inside the closed jars that counts the most.

And although drying tobacco doesn’t have all the same techniques and goals as drying and curing marijuana, take a look at the video at the end of the article. It’s interesting and useful.

If you’ve carefully read this article, clicked the links, and watched the videos, now you can harvest, dry, and cure marijuana like a pro, kick back with your friends, and inhale those tasty nugs finished to perfection!

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